


Humans Always Cry

by wargoddess



Series: Devils and Humans Cry [1]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 03:32:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: At the end of DMC3, Dante is the one who falls into the underworld, while Vergil goes on.





	Humans Always Cry

**Author's Note:**

> A little grimdark inspired by Fathers' Day. (Unrelated to "A Family Affair"-verse.) Not wholly awful, though.

     It's a maneuver they learned in childhood, and Vergil will think later that he should have seen it coming.  He means to slash Dante's hand as he falls.  _Don't follow me_ , the gesture should say, because Vergil has already decided that it's better to reign in hell than apologize to his brother in the purgatory that the human world has been for them both.  It's childish, but not only that.  The only thing Vergil still owns, the only thing he's ever built by himself, is his pride.  And if he cannot have power, then he must have something.

     He forgets the maneuver until Dante catches the sword by the flat of its blade.  It's too late then, even though Vergil tries to react; that's the beauty of the maneuver.  Vergil remembers practicing it with Dante when they were children, and thinking even then that it was too tricksy for his tastes.  Too quintessentially Dante.  But it's effective, and so Vergil can only widen his eyes as Dante yanks on the sword before Vergil can even think to let go, hard enough to sort of slingshot Vergil forward.  Dante throws his weight back and swings them and when he lets Vergil go, centrifugal force is running the show.  Vergil is flung away from the pit.  Dante, though...

     He grins at Vergil as he falls.  _Gotcha_ , that grin says.  It's pointless.  He already won their fight.  Vergil was cut in half, and is only alive by the grace of demonic healing.  But then, it's never been about winning with Dante.  The fool has done this for his usual inane reason:  because it's fun.  Because he is an ass.  And because --

     Vergil lands and tumbles into the river, half-drowning in the rush of water before he can manage to push his head above the water.  (His spine shrieks that it has been severed and he is dead.  The rest of his body sneers at the spine for being weak, and obeys his commands, albeit poorly.)  By the time he manages to get to his feet and stumble to the edge of the precipice, Dante isn't even visible as a falling figure in the dark.

     The urge to let himself fall is gone, now.  Dante has rejected his pride, stolen his martyrdom.  Now all Vergil has is his life.  Alone.

     He has always been alone.  This means nothing.

     _I like this move_ , he remembers Dante saying of the maneuver, after he used it to throw Vergil across the front yard.  _I'm gonna call it the switchy-switchy.  Let's show Father!_

     "Foolishness," he murmurs after Dante.  But he is frowning at himself.

#

     The human woman is unhappy to see him instead of Dante emerge from the pit, but the fact that the world has not ended is proof enough of Dante's victory before his fall.  Vergil smells Arkham's deathblood on her and decides that she has earned her own life.  They stand awhile looking at the ruined tower, and then she frowns at him.  "Are you crying?"

     He looks at her coldly, so she can see plainly that he is not.  _Humans_ cry.  She blinks, looks at something on his cheeks, looks into his eyes, and decides not to comment further on whatever she's seeing.

     They part ways, to the degree that they ever traveled in the same direction. 

     Vergil claims the unnamed "business," if a fleatrap can be called such, that his brother founded.  He does not bother with paperwork or inheritance courts; the rent needs paying, so he simply pays it, and no one bothers him about it.  (And how does one prove death when the body fell into hell?  If Dante is dead.  He hopes Dante is dead.)  The idea, Vergil gathers from receipts and notes scrawled on gay porn magazines in Dante's terrible handwriting, was to make a living hunting demons.  This won't do.  Vergil has other concerns, like gaining power.  Dante has forced this life upon him, so Vergil will make use of Dante's possessions and interests as he sees fit.

     There's a photo of their mother on Dante's desk.  Vergil leaves that where it is.  Otherwise, he converts the business into an arcane-goods store, selling artifacts and books that he has collected in his search for Sparda's power -- those that are useless to him -- and using the proceeds to finance his continued research. 

     But... something is wrong.  Something has changed.  He finds himself in his vault one day, staring down at a scroll that describes a way to open the underworld.  The method mentioned is impractical -- it involves starting a cult, performing dozens of rituals, and sacrificing several thousand newborns.  Probably the same thing that built the Temen-ni-gru.  He doesn't have time for that.

     (Why does he feel such urgency?  Mundus has been a threat all his life.  Why would he want to open a way to the underworld?  He puts the scroll away.)

     Periodically Arkham's daughter seeks Vergil out and gives him information that he has not asked for, yet which proves useful.  Devil-hunters the world over have noticed a drastic uptick in the appearance of portals -- which follows, given that Sparda's seal is broken, but which also means that the underworld is up to something.  There are rumors about a white-haired, exceptionally strong child in Fortuna City.  Vergil considers how he passed his time there and decides that there is a slim chance; he'll look into it later.  She also asks him to assist her, now and again, with killing greater demons.  Occasionally he agrees, if only to keep himself strong and to get more stock for his business, though more often than not he refuses on general principle.  Let the strong live and the weak die.  He expects her to be among the latter.

     She isn't.  She curses him for his coldness, fights the demons he refuses, kills them, and grows stronger.  She sells Devil Arms and other demonic artifacts to him, and he gives her a fairer price for them than any human dealer would have, because he understands their true price.  Mutual respect develops.  One day she invites him to bed her.  He agrees because it's always good to have an outlet for stress.  He enjoys her strong, scarred body, taking care to bleed her only a little and pleasure her a great deal.  When it's done, he decides to ask for her name.  She snorts at the realization that he hasn't known or cared until now.

     "Call me 'Lady,'" she says, with a shrug.  "It's as good as anything, and Dante seemed to like it."

     Vergil flinches at the mention of his brother's name, aloud, for the first time in years.  She notices, her eyes narrowing.  He rolls over and tells her that she can leave, if she's had her fill of him.

     (She rolls him back and lets him know she hasn't.  _Nice score, dude,_ he hears a voice drawl in the back of his mind, while she rides him.  Vergil snorts and thinks back, _That is because I choose warriors who have proven themselves worthy, not anyone who spreads their legs or bends over, have some damned pride for a change_ \--   The thought falls flat, however, because.  He finds himself angry in its wake.  Lady draws his attention back to her and eases the anger.  He is... grateful.)

 #   

     Some weeks later, Vergil is busy mapping out portal openings and triangulating their epicenter to an island somewhere in the northern Pacific, when a strange woman comes to visit.  She reeks of demon and looks entirely too much like his dead mother, and she tells him about a place called Mallet Island, where Mundus has set some plan into motion.  Same island Vergil noted.  Vergil agrees to go -- then cuts the woman down.  He did not survive years of being hunted by falling for obvious traps.

     Lady offers to go with him.  He refuses, and sends her instead to Fortuna to verify his suspicion about the boy there; he cannot allow Mundus to sniff out anyone else of Sparda's blood.  (She asks what he'll do if he's right about the boy being his son.  "Send money," he says, and shrugs.  He's not father material and they both know it.  She shakes her head, but complies.)

     The island is infested with an army of demons.  Vergil kills them.  It contains a second-stage interstitial mirror dimension, which means there's a major hellgate developing somewhere nearby.  Vergil enters it, meaning to destroy it -- and there he finds a ghost.

     It's Dante.  Even with his hair shorn down to white fuzz and his clothing reduced to a pair of serpent-demon-skin pants; it's Dante.  Things have been done to his body.  Vergil considers the chains grown into Dante's muscle and skin, the loops piercing bone, and tries to calculate what it would take to overwhelm their demonic healing factor to such a degree.  Torture, obviously, but also surgery, cauterization, possible deliberate infection of wounds, more.  There are markings all over Dante's bare skin, runes written in raised brown-and-purple scars.  Vergil can read some of them:  suppressants and restraints.  These do not explain the one thing that Vergil cannot fathom, which is the absolute lack of expression on his younger brother's face.  It isn't just a failure to recognize Vergil.  He expected Mundus to erase Dante's memory; demon lords like to do that.  What seems impossible is that there's nothing else -- no smile, no smirk, no wink.  No anger or bitterness that Vergil has left Dante to suffer all this while.  His personality is gone, cut and cauterized away, and that is worse than any bodily damage the demons could have inflicted.

     "Dante," Vergil murmurs, even though he knows Mundus is watching and this will reveal a weakness.

     "My name is Beast," Dante grates, in a voice that is hoarse and hollow.  Vocal chords torn again and again until they healed wrong.  "My master has commanded me to stop you."

     Then he transforms, and oh God.  Vergil did not know that Mundus could change him this way, too.

     Vergil fights, because he has no choice.  The thing that his brother has become is mindless, and relentlessly savage.  It uses no weapon, runs on all fours, and has a bifurcated jaw.  Its wings don't work -- something has crushed and atrophied them -- but it can leap so fast and so high that Vergil's own attempts to fly only make him more vulnerable to its attacks.  This is not the Devil Trigger that Vergil remembers forcing out of Dante atop Temen-ni-gru; Vergil saw their father's elegance in that creature's sleek lines.  There is no beauty in this version of Dante.  No Dante at all.

     Vergil survives, just.  Twice more the Beast attacks, as Vergil makes his way through the castle, and twice more Vergil must use every bit of skill that he possesses to fend the creature off.  He doesn't try to reason with it, or get it to remember him, which he is certain would be pointless.  He fights only to survive.  And because he is angry, he must admit at last.  _Furious_ , at what Mundus has done.  He doesn't blame their father for turning on the bastard, not one bit.

     But there's a moment in the last battle.  Vergil's amulet slips loose from his vest -- and the Beast flinches back from it, slitted pupils narrowing to jagged slivers as it stares.  It's an opening, and Vergil does not hesitate to use the chance to strike the creature down.  It's mercy; this thing that occasionally wears his brother's face deserves that.  It vanishes with a cry amid blue-black flames, and Vergil claims the amulet that it leaves behind.  With this, he can awaken the Force Edge to its full power and perhaps, at last, avenge the desecration of his brother.

     _Fool_ , Mundus taunts, when they at last face one another.  _You know that everything I did to him should have happened to you.  You, at least, understand what it is to be demon; you might have endured my games, and retained a semblance of yourself.  He fell because you sought power you had not earned, and he broke because you failed him.  Hate yourself for your weakness, not me._

     "I can do both," Vergil snarls back.  And then he tears the king of the underworld apart.

     In the wake of victory he is at a loss for what to do next.  His whole life has been devoted to this moment; suddenly, it seems meaningless.  He has done what their father could not, but he feels no pride or sense of accomplishment.  He is very likely the most powerful being in multiple realms and he. Cannot. Bring. Himself. To. Care.

     Lady returns and informs him that not only is the boy undeniably his son, but that the humans surrounding him know, and are planning to use his Spardan blood to give themselves power.  Vergil goes to Fortuna and kills them all.  This includes a man named Credo whom the boy seems to regard as an older brother figure.  The boy, all of ten years old and fierce and foul-mouthed in a way that makes Vergil think of a lopsided grin and a voice saying _Jackpot_ , swears vengeance.  Vergil tosses him the Sparda, which the child can barely lift, and says before he leaves, "Grow stronger, then."

     This is sincere.  Suicide isn't really an option for their kind; the demon fights it and takes over if too much damage is done.  Therefore Vergil will be waiting, when the boy comes for him.

     He waits a long time.  The world slows down, or seems to, with fewer demon invasions to threaten it.  Lady complains about the lack of devil hunting business, and he offers her a financial partnership in his shop as secondary income.  She takes the offer.  She also takes his seed, when she decides that she wants a family, and thus she gives birth to a strong, healthy girl with white hair and blue eyes and a permanent frown etched on her little brow.  Vergil doesn't care what Lady names the child.  However, he sends her money, sets aside Rebellion for whenever his daughter is ready, and starts using condoms whenever Lady visits thereafter.  He's out of good swords.

     Then, at last, on a night of dark clouds and lightning that reminds Vergil of Mallet Island, Nero arrives at his shop.  He's grown well, tall and strong, and Vergil can sense the heavy, deep well of demonic power that sits within him like a black hole.  More than enough; excellent.  Vergil nods in greeting and suggests that they head to the roof for their battle -- but then he notices that the boy has some human-made mechanical thing sheathed on his back, in lieu of the Sparda.  Vergil narrows his eyes.

     Nero curls his lip in what passes for his smile.  "Somebody else came for it," he says, and Vergil's belly clenches in... what?  Not excitement.  Not fear.  Just a muscle spasm, probably.  (His spine twinges with the memory of being severed.)  "Tough son of a bitch.  Tore my fucking arm off -- it grew back -- and nearly killed me, more than once.  When he got the sword, though, it changed him somehow.  Fixed something.  So I let him keep it.  Figured you wouldn't mind, as long as it stayed in the family." 

     And then, as Vergil stands there stunned by this blow, Nero lands another, more softly.  "Uh, I guess you were right about the Order.  Credo..."  He looks away.  "Family doesn't always make choices we agree with.  I guess they're still family, though, if they made those choices because they cared.  So..."

     He looks at Vergil as if this means something.  And then, infuriatingly, he leaves, without even trying to kill Vergil once. 

     Ungrateful wretches, children.

     (He calls Lady and asks their daughter's name.  He can hear her rolling her eyes, even over the phone line, as she tells him.  Still, she says she'll bring the girl with her the next time she comes to visit.  Why does he feel pleasure, at this pronouncement?  He just wants to assess the child's strength and determine whether it's time to begin training her.  That's all.)

     That's all.

     Well.  Not quite.

#

     Nero makes up for not killing Vergil by returning perhaps a year later.  It's a sunny, hot afternoon in the middle of summer.  Vergil's on the roof, waiting alone.  He has always been alone.  Then suddenly he isn't, because two people have come up on the roof behind him.  One is Nero, with hands in his pockets, watching them with feigned nonchalance.  The other...

     Someone has torn the chains from Dante's flesh and bone.  The scars remain; Vergil can sense them, though now his brother wears plain black clothing neck to toe.  Vergil can see the scars, too, in Dante's unsmiling face, and hear them in his rough, flat voice as he says Vergil's name.

     "It should have been me," Vergil blurts without thinking.

     "No," Dante grates.  So terrible, the lack of a smile on his face, but then he has literally been through hell.  Even for their kind, healing takes time.  "It shouldn't have been either of us.  But now we're both free."

     Vergil stands there, at a loss for what to do next.  Thus it is Dante who closes the distance between them and awkwardly, stiffly, pulls him into an embrace.  Even then, Vergil holds himself rigid against it.  All he really has is his pride.  And perhaps he is braced for... he doesn't know.  A knife in the back.  Claws through his heart.  It hurts like claws, but there is no blow.  Just the smell of his brother's hair, as familiar as the back of his own hand.  Just the weight of Dante's arms, which Vergil has not felt since they were eight years old.

     It takes an eternity, but eventually he manages to return the embrace.

     "Are you crying?"  Nero asks, when they have finally drawn apart.

     Vergil glares at him.  The boy is obviously blind.  This is what comes of letting humans raise him.  "Does it look like I'm crying?"

     Nero just looks at him for a moment before finally saying, "Huh.  Guess it's the rain."  Then Nero decides not to comment further on whatever he's seeing on Vergil's face, and he turns to head toward the roof door.  "Gonna order some pizza.  See you guys downstairs."  He heads off.

     They stand together for a while, in silence.  Finally, because Vergil understands that his whole life has been steered like a lodestone by the man who stands beside him, he says, "What now?"

     Dante shrugs.  "Pizza, apparently."

     It's... something.  Vergil sighs.  "Come, then, brother.  If we don't stop that fool boy, I suspect he'll order it with olives."

     Dante's answering laugh is a shadow of what it should be.  Barely more than a breath.  Painful to hear it and know what has been lost.  Still, it's there, as pure and undeniable as tears.  That's something.

     They head downstairs, together.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually having a great Fathers' Day -- just slow, which of course means that my goddamn muse decided to smack me between the lobes with this miserable sobfest. Fuck you, Muse. Sideways, with a broken-off Rebellion.
> 
> It's actually kind of weird to think of them sans incest! I do think Lady wouldn't leave either of the brothers unclaimed, however, if they were actually available and interested. For God's sake, look at them. Wouldn't you hit that, if you were a cishet woman who for some reason decided that you wanted to risk giving birth to a superhuman and possibly catastrophically evil baby? Mmm-mmm-mmm. Also, goddamn it, I want to see a female "Spardan."
> 
> Continuing with the comment moderation, for now, since it still seems to be necessary. Fellow Vergil stans, for fuck's sake, not everybody wants to woobify the guy, **and that's okay.** Please grow up.
> 
> Yyyyeah, he killed Trish. You didn't think that was going to go over well, did you?


End file.
